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Monthly Archives: November 2013

If as Jesus said (Luke 17:6 paraphrased, Matthew 17:20), you only need to have faith as small as a mustard seed to command mountains to move (should apply to healing as well), then there is real trouble!
Most pastors/churches just want you to worship in their churches or attend some event they are holding and “hope” you will get “your” healing. That’s leaving it completely to chance. (And if a couple of people out of several thousands do get healed, going by the way it is celebrated, it would have required an all-week party in Jesus’ time to celebrate the several people that got healed during similar gatherings. Unfortunately, even the few Pastors who seem to actively cause people to receive their healing have so much controversy surrounding them, it’s probably wise to keep a reasonable distance. There were no controversies surrounding the healing Jesus and the apostles performed – they were “self-evident”.)

Whereas in fact, during the time of Jesus and the Apostles, it was an “active ministry” – Jesus (and the Apostles) went out to actively heal people or people who approached them got healed.

So does it mean just as the rest of us, our pastors’ faith are not even as big as a small mustard seed?

A friend going out of town a couple of days ago had asked me to go get his car from his office (where he had parked it and taken a taxi to the airport). It wasn’t quite convenient for me to do so due to the location of the office. Anyway, I had decided I was going to go pick up the vehicle yesterday night but closed from work quite late (about 10PM). So I made up my mind I was going to go get the car this morning. I had more or less decided I would take a cab to his office though I must confess there was the beginnings of an idea that I might just walk there instead.

So this morning I got up and hadn’t quite made up my mind which mode of transportation to take to his office (also I had to keep in mind that I had an appointment in a couple of hours). But while Whatsapping as I walked to the main road, I told a “friend” that I had issues with my car and that I was walking on the road and the friend commented that it was good and that I needed the walk since I was lazy (there is a background story to trhat so don’t take it out of context :-). At that moment, I made up my mind to walk to his office. So I walked all the way from a street off Bishop Oluwole in Victoria Island, across the bridge into Ikoyi to the old NNPC Building on Alfred Riwane Road. It took 50 minutes and I usually walk briskly. I guess I could knock off about 5minutes if I hadn’t stop to take pictures and admire the scenery.

I was basically walking on a workday in the opposite direction to the heavy traffic flowing into Victoria Island. I was in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and I could see that some of the people in the cars looked at me curiously (I suspect some of it had to do with my taking pictures with my phone). There was also the fact that I was walking along the side of the bridge and at some point on the bridge itself since there was really no pedestrian walkway (does that count as jaywalking? I guess so. So is it a misdemeanor or something more serious?).

It also served as my exercise for the day.

Below are some random pictures I took along the way. Makes me wonder during the olden days when people walked from the “interior” of the country to Lagos (the Ocean). Some of the distances were 200Km to 500Km or even more. They were never really in a hurry though. Stopping at villages along the way and were usually received with respect that was typically awarded to strangers or road travelers in those days. They can usually be assured of meals and shelter. So if I covered say a kilometer or two in an hour, I can only estimate how long those trips took. That was the happy scenarios, but I am sure some people didn’t make the journey so willingly because they were freemen (and women and children) who had become slaves by virtue of their villages having been pillaged by stronger neighboring villages and they were on their way to be shipped across the oceans to foreign lands (a lot of them didn’t even survive the inhuman conditions of the journey itself and they ended up as food for the fishes).

So I would usually jog in place in my room in the mornings. 400 steps in place, lift a 6kg dumbbell, 40times per arm. Sometimes 60. Then 40 to 50 press-ups. Another 400 steps in place. The issue is I got tired of having to count to 800. I decided I would switch to using a stopwatch instead. That way I can use my head and concentration for something else while jogging. I was taken aback when I found out that all my jogging in place for 800 steps didn’t take up to 8 minutes!

So now I have switched to using the stopwatch function on my Android phone to jog for 8 minutes (that should give me about a thousand steps). The problem is that even though I am no longer counting, I find I have replaced that with looking at the stopwatch and hoping the darn thing will count to 8 minutes ASAP. The 8 minutes feels like forever! And I can’t really focus on anything else contrary to my initial thoughts on the matter.

I think I read of some research recently that aerobic exercises of about 22 minutes per day should add 3 to 4 years to ones lifespan. I am not particular about the extra years, but more concerned about the quality i.e., ensuring they are spent in good health.

So I find that if I stick to the jogging alone, I am short of about 14 minutes! The other stuff I am doing above should add some more minutes but still quite short of 22. So what else am I gonna add? Hmmn. Which reminds me of the planking exercise which is supposed to “strengthen your core.” I think I can manage a minute if it’s the last thing I do or 2 minutes if I do it first before the other exercises 🙂

Also I am looking for an “accountability partner” or whatever term a “buddy” setup goes by. Someone to encourage you (and vice versa) to stick to the programme and keep off the chocolates 🙂

Swallowing tablets with no water in sight. That title was an attention-grabbing “summary” 🙂

So today, I more or less woke up with a headache. It hadn’t improved several hours later when I took my seat on-board the SAA flight from Johannesburg to Lagos. I fished around in my laptop bag and found a little hospital-dispensed sachet of paracetamol caplets (or whatever tablets with the oblong shape are called). I looked towards the front of the plane and realized it would still take a while before the plane was ready for takeoff and I wasn’t likely to be able to get anything from the hostesses before then as lots of people were still filing in, putting their bags in the overhead compartments and taking their seats.

There I was seated with some gremlins playing heavy-metal music in my head.

I decided I should try and swallow the 2 caplets without water. I have done similar things before in the past but not frequently – usually with regular round tablets.

It’s not as bad as one would think but it is advisable to indeed have water at hand (then why bother you ask) in case something goes wrong.

I had read somewhere that the taste cells in the tongue is mostly at the tip and possible some along the outer edge (which I think I have more or less confirmed) and one could reduce the bitter taste of almost anything by avoiding contact with those regions of the tongue? So the main trick is to drop the tablet a little back on your tongue (not that paracetamol tablets are really bitter though). The next step is to make some extra saliva to swallow the caplet. This is a little difficult to explain but it should be natural to most people (after all people salivate easily without conscious thought at the sight or thought of some delicacy they fancy – but i understand that in the case of the tablet, nervousness may actually have the opposite effect). You just “work” your tongue/throat as if you want to swallow a few times. Once you have a little build-up, you then attempt to swallow the caplet. It may not go smoothly and you may need to “work” your throat again to “float” the tablet a little. Sometimes it feels as if the caplet/tablet would (or is going) down the “wrong” way, but you should be alright. Depending on the shape of the tablet, it could actually be quite uncomfortable going down (trust me, I have experienced this first hand).

Anyways, I “did” both tablets one after the other. And due to psychology of it, I started feeling a little better almost immediately even though I knew that the tablets have probably not even started to dissolve not to talk of the active components making their way to my head to relieve me of the headache.

The flight was OK except that the entertainment system refused to work for most of the flight.

Well, I did manage to watch Johnny Depp’s “The lone ranger (2013)” towards the end of the flight. But all in all, a reasonably comfortable flight on SAA. No one ever died from missing 6 hours of entertainment on-board a plane so what is there to complain about?